F. M. Busby (1921–2005)

More pulpy scifi from my aunt's house. Also my first F.M. Busby. I realize now I was supposed to read the Rissa Kerguelen stories first (which I also have) as apparently this character features in them at some point later in life and this is somewhat of a prequel. However, this works as a jumping off point too, as we're getting a solid life story here that doesn't seem to require any prior knowledge, Busby is doing a good job of making the world feel 'lived in' without much exposition.
This show more is interesting reading from a current time lense...Busby was a good friend and contemporary of Heinlein, as well as being very heavily influenced by and sitting firmly in the pulp world. That will give you some idea of what you're in for. We have a protagonist that you're going want to like, she's strong, she's female, she's lgbtqia+, she's a poc that embraces aspects of her appearance...but she's also a pretty terrible person. Though of course this is grounded in the idea that her life has also been pretty terrible, and as know, hurt people hurt people. I've seen quite a bit of criticism of those less than savory aspects of her character, other characters, and Busby's world in general. While I get where its coming from in modern readers, I also think I understand where somewhat of a disconnect is occurring.
Many of us are used to the Star Wars era of Space Opera. Because this is definitely not crunchy, hard, scifi. And in that Star Wars-esque Space Opera, we see a lot of classic tropes of good versus evil, heroes' journey, fable and fairy tale. And none of that is here. This future is a pretty goddamned bleak one. But, unlike something modern like the Expanse, we get only brief glimpses into how bad the world itself really is...Busby is good about showing, not telling, but in this case he 'shows' very minimally. A few brief looks at average conditions on earth and the shantytown on a colony world. Most of setting that's described and explored feels more like a gleaming star trek future, and less like an Alien hellscape. Yet, what we see about actual *people* from rape, slavery, mutinees leading to desperate escapes to other questionable conditions, widespread homelessness, clearly abusive institutions, its definitely not the sort of gleaming future we're used to seeing in space opera. I personally find the juxtaposition of setting to action and behaviors of characters really interesting rather than offputting. Its also fast paced and packed with action as one might expect from pulp era space opera.
I think as long as you go into the story knowing what to expect, and are willing to look at it through a broader lense, there's a lot to enjoy and to find of interest here. show less

'Cage a Man' (1973) would be an undistinguished pulp novel about aliens that threaten the planet if it was not for the remarkable and disturbing tone of the book. It feels like an expression of rage by the author even as the barely suppressed rage of the protagonist drives the story.

Barton is a former Vietnam veteran who, in his early thirties, is kidnapped by aliens (the Demu) and subjected to brutal torture for eight years. He escapes with a Demu space craft and is part of the show more military-industrial team that works on responding to the expected invasion threat.

The Demu are not so much consciously evil as an ideologically callous race whose idea of 'doing good' is to turn all other species, who they consider animals, into Demu through mutilating surgery and mind control. The Cold War ideological formulation is too obvious to require comment.

Busby was a Second World War veteran though he seems not to have seen direct action and is on the list of those science fiction writers who backed the Vietnam War. Perhaps this book partly channels an anti-communist frustration with the way that war had gone.

Certainly the Demu approach to mind control and torture could be read back to stories of Communist actions againsts POWs in both Korea and Vietnam. There is an interesting tension between the Demu as a sort of substitute alien gook and recognition that they may also be like us.

A child Demu, one of the kidnapped, becomes a symbol of the Demu being able to think in completely different terms and adopt human ideals. Although this is not developed much, it tends to show that a species or people can be separated from its 'bad' ideology.

Be that as it may, the violence perpetrated on the lobster-like Demu by Barton once he is able to do so pulls no punches nor does Busby pull any more punches in describing the Demu methods of torture, the mutilations of prisoners or what is necessary to try and undo them on Earth.

It is a deeply unpleasant book from that perspective, close to being a novel of horror. Busby also does not flinch from scenes of sexual exploitation and violence in which Barton is as complicit as his captors. Even as a reincorporated human, he remains sexually exploitative and callous.

Barton seems partly justified (given what was done to him) but also as having lost his own humanity and becoming ever more like an animal (thus confirming Demu beliefs) in the desperate game of surviving not only the Demu but his subsequent reincorporation into humanity.

When he returns home, the story revolves around his barely suppressible rage and paranoia and how he deals with those around him including the kidnapped Demu brought with him when he hijacked a Demu craft.

How a sort of redemption emerges in a frankly unsatisfactory ending would be a spoiler but let us say that a good if very dark book is trying to crawl out of an average pulp science fiction horror novel even if it never quite succeeds.

There is a great deal of unresolved tension and ambiguity in this novel. This can often be a good thing in art but, in this case, one guesses it is less deliberate and more an expression of the working out of similar tensions and ambiguities in the first novel of its fifty-year old late-blooming author. show less

Hope Springs Eternal

As a young girl, raised in a home with two alcoholic parents, I know a lot about neglect, emotional, physical and sexual abuse. When I first read Young Rissa, I finally found someone in whom I could find hope for a better life.

Rissa Kerguelen is sent into the Welfare program on Earth at age five when her parents are killed. Along with her brother, Ivan, they are ripped from the comfort of a luxurious and safe home and sent into hell.

On Earth, approximately 30% of the show more population is indentured to the Welfare system and almost no one ever buys their way out. Occasionally, someone hits the Government run lottery and escapes but usually falls back into Welfare's clutches.

Rissa and Ivan are in the system for close to six years. Enduring physical abuse and rape, Rissa worries about her brother. All of the reports she hears about Ivan are that he is "in punishment status."

Shockingly, Rissa discovers that she has won the biggest Welfare lottery and is freed around her 11th year. Her Uncle Voris meets her and explains the danger she now faces.

The rest of the book is a triumph over the worst odds, a thrilling hope to anyone who has ever been held in captivity and one of the best Space Operas I've ever read.

It's been close to 45 years since I last read this book but it was like coming home to re-read it. F. M. Busby's Rissa Kerguelen is why I'm a Science Fiction fan for life. show less

Recently I reviewed the nearly forgotten F. M Busby's 1973 science fiction novel 'Cage a Man' (this collection of short stories includes what may be a 'lost chapter' from that book) and produced a decidedly mixed review. This short story collection is better.

'Cage A Man' was a peculiar mixture of violent and even potent recreation of extreme experience in an alien world and somewhat standard issue space opera pulp. The first half was dominated by the visceral and the sensitive and the second show more half by the formulaic.

Not having read his other novels, I do not know whether it is right that Busby was better at the short story format than the extended novel but it sure looks that way so far. This collection is not helped by having a very weak 'go back and shoot grandad' time travel story from 1957 at the start.

However, the rest of the collection is more mature - 19 stories from 1972 to 1975 which may vary in quality but which can be very good on occasions. There is little space opera here. Even the 'lost chapter' of 'Cage A Man' is essentially a psychological tale. The cover of the book is misleading.

If there is a dominant theme it is a concern with consciousness, thought experiments in the philosophy of mind. He explores with more success than most what it might be like to be an alien life form through its eyes and not that of the silent human in each story (three stories).

There are other capable stories about time and consciousness. Some of his explorations are as difficult to grasp as a philosophy text although narratively readable. He is interested in psychedelics and there is a repeated 'silent' background of polyamory and free love.

We have a sensitive love story about people who live their lives shooting back and forwards through their life span with their chronology disrupted. In another tale a man finds he is born as a woman with memories of the past intact: it is perhaps a happy tale of the 'eternal return'.

A student in the well written title story (although the twist at the end is hackneyed) takes a drug only to find that he exists outside his body and must find his way back to it through a tortuous process of jumping from person to person, engineering himself to sleep as near to them as possible.

The skill he shows in inventing alien minds is applied to describing the personalities of the people the student is forced to inhabit - most notably with a kindly homosexual in an unsympathetic male society. Busby might have been a fine novelist if he could have sustained his imagination.

There is some dystopianism in another tale with a future California that is uncannily close to the California of today although restrictions on people are down to the fear of population explosion more than need for Net Zero. Either way, diesel is on the way out and violent crime is on the way in.

There are oddities. A witty, cynical parody of Kubrick's '2001' movie. A rather silly rant against God. Busby does not like God very much - he gets two short strikes at Him or Her. There are two 'aliens ex machina' tales, one darkly humorous.

The sexual violence and rage of 'Cage A Man' is also present. 'Tell Me All About Yourself' about misogynistic necrophilia probably could not be published today. The desperate survivalist dog-like rape of a human by aliens in 'Misconception' will shock most people.

Overall, Busby is not a great of science fiction but when he is good he is very good both as a transgressive writer and as an explorer of consciousness, especially alien. His interest in science fiction as thought experiment was deliberate and his occasional 1970s male rage is the real thing. show less